The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries just completed its annual deer report, and it shows deer-harvest numbers are rebounding after enduring more than a decade of decline.

Statewide harvest for the 2013-14 was estimated at 166,200 deer, up from 152,700 the previous season. The climb puts the annual harvest at similar levels to the late 1980s but still far below the 250,000-plus deer per year that hunters took in the late 1990s.

Of this year's harvest, 134,200 deer were taken by modern gun, 19,700 by primitive firearm, 8,700 by bow and 3,600 by crossbow.

The harvest numbers are an estimate because the department continues to rely on mail-survey responses. Beginning with the 2008-09 season, the state implemented a tagging system that requires hunters to tag and report their deer after harvest, but hunter compliance has been abysmal.

Except for the 2013-14 season, self-reported harvest has declined every year since it was implemented, falling from 116,571 in 2008-09 to 63,278 in 2012-13. The self-reported harvest inched up to 68,988 last season.

That means if the department's harvest estimate is accurate, only 42 percent of successful hunters reported their kills.

That low compliance rate may eventually impact deer-season lengths, according to Scott Durham, deer study leader for the department.

"We're still kind of muddling along about what the real harvest is," he said. "Hunters are partners; they're managers. If they choose not to report their deer, it can come back to hurt them through reduced seasons."

Though limited in scope because of the low participation, the data Durham has gathered through the state's self-reporting program has been beneficial.

"It's given me information at the parish level that I wouldn't have had," he said. "I can't take it as a whole harvest, but it gives me trends by parish that I wouldn't have had.

That's critical because Durham is pushing to fine-tune the state's deer-hunting regulations. Currently, the state is divided into 10 deer-hunting areas with unique season lengths and dates in each. Durham would like to see that number increased because some areas are overrun with deer, while others don't support very many.

"I'd really like to manage at a little bit finer scale instead of one statewide limit," he said. "Other states manage at the county level. You've got a different set of regulations for every county. I don't think 12, maybe even 15 (deer-management zones) would be out of the question.

"I know some people don't like that. They say, 'Aw, y'all are making it too complicated,' but this is really not a simple world anymore. Hunters are very sophisticated. The habitat is changing, and there are more people in certain areas.

"We have a very long, liberal gun season for a state with as many hunters as we have. Our license sales are going up. We set a record for license sales (last year)."

The department issued 227,001 sets of big-game tags in 2008-09, and that number has climbed almost every year since. In 2013-14, it was 270,730.

Even with that increase, Durham said he's not concerned with the state's deer population as a whole. He said the average harvest per hunter is less than one deer, and only half the hunters even kill a deer.

He estimates the statewide deer population at a minimum of 500,000. That's not a bad number, but Durham acknowledged it could certainly be better.

"We have some habitats that are declining and some that have already declined," he said. "We've reached a different carrying capacity than we had a decade ago. It's a little lower than it was, but I think it's leveled out. We're at a new stability."

One of those areas that's seen a noticeable population decline is Southeast Louisiana. After the one-two punch of 2011's record river floods and 2012's surge from Hurricane Isaac, the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission, at the department's request, implemented stricter regulations in the area.

"We went to the either-sex days in the coastal zone and Florida Parishes," Durham said. "That was a direct result of the downward population trend. Also, in the reporting data, where we get the parish-level harvest, we saw some of those parishes trending down.

"We started getting requests from hunters to close down the deer season. I just decided that if things are so bad that we've got to do emergency season closures, something had to change."

It's too soon to tell if those regulation changes are having the desired impact, Durham said, but he expects to revisit the regulations sometime in 2015 or 2016.